Let me start my comment by saying I very much believe in global warming and that I believe it is primarily caused by humans dumping enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
I would suggest sheer perseverance of publishing the science in the face of such unfounded denialism will eventually do the trick, in the same way that it worked to convince the public of the link between smoking and cancer despite the opposition from vested interests at the time.
There's a big difference this time that makes your analogy break down. Smoking does not give people that much of a boost in their quality of life. (In fact, it costs them a lot of money, and it makes them horribly sick--possibly even killing them!)
Lots of cheap energy gives people an enormous boost in their quality of life. Even if you get everyone agreeing that global warming is real and caused by human industry, they're still going to want their cheap energy--even if that means we continue dumping unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The two primary camps today are the deniers (who are obviously deluded) and the believers (who are also deluded--they actually believe humanity will solve the problem, given enough evidence or education or whatever).
There are billions--billions--of humans on the planet, and a large percentage of them want to improve their quality of life--or, at the very least, not see it drop. There are hundreds of countries, many of them ready, willing, and able to burn all the coal and oil they can afford. (If some countries use less--in an attempt to reduce CO2 emissions--there's less demand, thus prices will drop, thus it'll become more affordable to those people and countries that so desperately want that energy to improve their quality of life.)
Humans are simply not going to stop dumping enormous quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. It. Just. Isn't. Going. To. Happen.
Our only hope at this point is some breakthrough technologies that produce energy at a lower cost than alternatives like burning coal and oil. If that happens, the free market will take care of the rest. If you want to slow, stop, and reverse global warming, we need to throw money at alternative energy research. Anything else is doomed and hopeless. There's simply too much demand for (cheap) energy.